Russia in 1998

The Economy

Alarmed by the nation’s financial crisis and determined to protect their populations from hardship, many of Russia’s regional leaders went their own ways without consulting the federal government. Tensions heightened as it became clear that the 1998 grain harvest would be the worst in more than 40 years. Many regions responded to the August crisis by imposing price controls on foodstuffs and trying to prevent the shipment of goods produced in their territories to neighbouring regions. The republics of Tatarstan and Kalmykia announced that they were halting the payment of taxes to the federal budget; Buryatia and the Samara region ordered local branches of Moscow banks not to transfer payments outside republic borders; and the Republic of Sakha declared that it was assuming control of its gold production and cutting back sales to the federal centre. Observers began to warn of a real danger that the Russian Federation might disintegrate--not by design but by default. With the exception of the breakaway Republic of Chechnya, which continued to maintain its independence, none of the regions wanted the federation to dissolve, but there was concern that the federal government was powerless to keep the country together.

As for war-ravaged Chechnya, the cash-strapped Russian government met none of its promises of financial aid. Russia, consequently, was unable to influence developments in the republic, where civil war seemed increasingly likely. Warlords resorted to kidnapping and gunrunning, and there were fears that lawlessness would spill over from Chechnya to neighbouring parts of the northern Caucasus. In October three British and one New Zealand engineers were kidnapped for ransom; their decapitated bodies were found in December.

Violent crime also continued in the rest of Russia. The nation was shocked by the assassination in St. Petersburg of Galina Starovoytova, one of Russia’s leading democratic parliamentarians, in November.

In July Yeltsin unexpectedly attended the entombment in St. Petersburg of Russia’s last tsar and his family. Yeltsin used the occasion to condemn the murders of the imperial family by the Bolsheviks as "one of the most shameful episodes" in Russian history. A commentator predicted that Yeltsin would be remembered for two things: "the overthrow of communism and the burial of the tsar."

Foreign Affairs

Russia’s foreign relations in 1998 were characterized by continuity. In September Primakov was replaced as foreign minister by his former first deputy and close political associate, Igor Ivanov. Russia lacked the political, military, and economic power to reclaim the U.S.S.R.’s role as a great power, but the government worked hard to maintain relations with old allies such as India and Iraq and to improve relations with China, Iran, and Japan. In May a telephone hot line opened between the Kremlin and the Chinese president’s office.

Tensions arose between Russia and the U.S. and its allies. In February Yeltsin warned that threatened U.S. military strikes against Iraq could spark a world war. Later in the year Moscow denounced NATO’s threats to use force against Serbia over its policy toward the province of Kosovo and the U.S.-British air strikes against Iraq. Primakov continued to voice strong opposition to NATO’s planned eastward enlargement, and Russia clashed with the U.S. over a lucrative Russian-Indian nuclear deal. During the summer the G-7 group of leading industrialized nations renamed itself the G-8 and welcomed Russian participation in its deliberations, but the innovation was quietly dropped after the August financial crisis revealed the full weakness of Russia’s economy.

By fall Russia’s foreign relations were becoming stymied by Yeltsin’s failing health. Meanwhile, a number of Russia’s republics pursued their own foreign relations with increasing vigour. This aroused resentment on the part of the federal government, which was, however, powerless to prevent it. Planned reforms of the military were stalled. This was due partly to lack of funding and partly to Yeltsin’s September firing of Security Council Secretary Andrey Kokoshin. The International Institute for Strategic Studies noted in its annual report that lack of money was undercutting Russia’s ability to carry out military operations. In May-July, for example, not one of Russia’s 26 nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines was at sea. There were reports of malnutrition among young conscripts and of hardship suffered by officers and their families as a result of wage arrears.

In December the Russian and Belarusian presidents signed a series of accords aimed at unifying their two countries, perhaps as soon as mid-1999, with a common currency and a common citizenship but retaining separate armed forces and distinct foreign policies. The move was seen by some as an attempt to promote the reintegration of the former Soviet republics.

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